The onset of COVID-19 could not have come at a worse time for the Australian tourism industry still reeling from the impacts of the 2019 bushfires.

Border closures prevented international travel and most interstate travel, leading to around 140 million fewer domestic trips and a loss of 7.6 million international visitors in 2020, an estimated loss of almost $100B in visitor expenditure.

Consumer demand for domestic travel was desperately needed. Problem was, the perfect storm of a summer of disasters, a global pandemic and Australia’s fall into recession for the first time in over 24 years, saw consumer confidence plummet and confidence in travel reach depths that had never been seen in the history of tracking.

Selling Australia to Australians, when they literally had nowhere else to go, became a near insurmountable challenge.

We quickly identified a new value in the domestic space.

We positioned local tourism as a form of shared recovery. Tapping into Australia’s enduring core values of camaraderie and mateship via the campaign slogan ‘Holiday Here This Year’ (HHTY) - a patriotic call-to-arms imploring Aussies to help the tourism industry, and themselves, by exploring the wonders and experiences in their own backyard.

HHTY became Tourism Australia’s campaign framework to address three key challenges that COVID threw at the sector.

1. Confidence: Australians had lost confidence in travel during the lockdown(s)
October 2020: Episode one of Holiday Here This Year was filmed during lockdown but showed Hamish and Zoe actively planning a holiday on a video call.

2. Yield: Aussie holidaymakers spend far less than international tourists
December 2020: Australians spend significantly more when they go to Cannes, than when they go to Cairns. We worked with local tourism operators to identify 12 different tourism experience buckets to create ‘12 days of Christmas Gifting’.

3. Cities: City destinations suffered disproportionately as a result of virus fears
February 2021: Our City campaign was launched with Hamish & Zoe compelling Australians to return to the cities. Earned media sustained through tailored content focused on providing inspiration for city-based experiences and itineraries.

‘Holiday Here This Year’ created a national conversation and a rallying cry of support for an industry in crisis.

Overall, the campaign has driven a faster than expected domestic recovery, increasing both consumer confidence and driving bookings.. It’s important to note that Tourism Australia’s role in this once-in-a-generation disaster has been to mitigate damage and we have done just that.

Deloitte (2020/2021) proposed three scenarios for Australian domestic tourism, mild, harsh, and severe. We’re happy to report that actual domestic travel results are outperforming their most optimistic of forecasts.

The industry is only 140m domestic trips down from 2019, which is problematic but far less serious than the forecast of 246m+ lost trips (ABS).